That said, signs of online persistent gameplay making a comeback. Also mature markets and the slow death of indie as a result is finally visible. More acquisitions, the big guys are relevant again, even an IPO.

I am around, because I always am. Talking on Friday. Mostly, catching up with friends.

You all joke about VR porn as it if isn't amazing. Protip: it is amazing.

I am still doing all of my gaming these days on VR and doubt I will ever go back to traditional gaming, except for certain specific things (a new Zelda, Southpark, that sort of thing). The technology is fucking great. The software just needs to catch up. Tons and tons of shit comes out for VR, with emphasis on the word "shit". There are enough pearls in there to make it worth it for me.

Never, ever assume someone that short and fat has their shit together. - Schild

Insightful as always. Reminded me of Mike Montiero's "How Designers Destroyed the World" talk, in the idea that we must be responsible for the things we put into this world. I also appreciated the idea of the unplanned events ala 'WoW plague' making it into our VR/IoT instances. I hadn't thought of that, and yet it's sure to happen in the near future.

I'm also slightly horrified that some of these lessons need to be taught. Jesus wept.

Edit : Bloody Hell, that escalated quickly. Well worth the time to watch. Also hilarious that the chap with the question right at the end clearly hadn't listened to a FUCKING WORD. Jesus Christ, what is wrong with people.

I'm also slightly horrified that some of these lessons need to be taught.

The online spaces that many here came of age in were a long time ago, and they don't teach about these things in history classes.

I read Bartle's book for the first time not long ago; I was impressed by a) how much is still relevant and b) how many designers need to keep re-learning lessons from decades ago.

While I accept that entirely, I'm more of the view that some of the things Raph talked about should fall squarely into 'we find these truths to be self evident' as a grownup thinker. Possibly I'm just being too generous here. (Well, clearly I am.)

Very good lecture. Glad to see that someone from the old school is STILL having to tell developers the same shit players were telling them as far back as 1995. Hey devs, you are gods - what kind of gods do you want to be?

Very good lecture. Glad to see that someone from the old school is STILL having to tell developers the same shit players were telling them as far back as 1995. Hey devs, you are gods - what kind of gods do you want to be?

Good talk. As blunt as it needed to be. And pathetic and terrifying that it needed to be given. I fear that the gross negligence of many recent releases are due to deliberate design--the developers not only don't know about the dangers, or care about the dangers, but think that the dangers are "cool". See the Conan Exiles devs talking about what kinds of torture and castration systems to add to their game, or the griefing-rewarding mechanics in Rust and ARK. The very notion of laws and responsibility are anathema to the quasi-libertarian cultures found in most Silicon Valley-style startups.

I especially like the line Raph said about how none of these motherfuckers can afford to do any of the sort of policing of the population that they absolutely need to and yet they go ahead and create these products anyway.

The mentality of "just do it anyway" falls into the realm of "good problems to have" in the minds of a lot of execs. "If we're so successful that virtual child molesters become a thing in our world, that's a good problem to have!" Just like MMOs failing to scale for launches--"if our servers can't handle the load and crash so often nobody can log in, that's a good problem to have! It means we're a hit!"

Parts of Raph's talk felt a lot like talks I've had with other developers and execs about software security and maintainability. They're seen as pure costs, until their absence shows up and crushes the product. One moderate security breach, one new "mandatory feature" for version 2.0 that doesn't play nice with version 1.0, and you're screwed.

The most common response was, by far, "but we're just building a prototype!" (or for games, "but it's Early Access!") with the assumption that they could just bolt those things on if the product is successful enough. It just doesn't work that way.

That said, I wonder if there's any room for "policing as a service" for virtual worlds? Maybe with some baseline requirements (logging, replay, data access/admin auditing), a third party could provide reasonably effective support, with possible opportunities of scale for handling the trickier issues? Mental health professionals and a big enough staff for fast response shared across many services may be a lot more affordable than having a dedicated team for Virtual Yardwork Simulator or whatever.